Siege I (Asedio I)

Siege I (Asedio I), a pivotal piece in Jauregi's career, is a wooden sculpture combining abstract formalization and precise subject matter. It is comprised of two pieces, a freestanding sculpture and a triptych relief that serves as a gloomy backdrop to the sculpted form. The triptych depicts an abstract landscape in black against a blue background. The artist has called this work an exploration of the poetry of abstraction; it makes no concession to either color or figuration, and it is deliberately difficult to interpret. The sculpture stands approximately thirty feet away from the triptych. Crafted in oak wood, it portrays an erect figure, above which glitters a second element, covered in gold leaf.

Jauregi began work on Siege I at the height of tensions with Iraq before the invasion by American troops, the moment of asphyxia and anguish before the action began. Jauregi seeks the representation of abstract forms referencing elements from nature, and of a type of civic order schematized in an iconography of houses, bridges, and trees, which seeks to describe how man lives together with nature, while also serving as a prelude to the end of order, a description of the moment prior to human conflict, the siege.